Angels Rally With Three Two-Out Runs in Ninth, Beat Rangers in 10 for Fifth Straight Win

The Los Angeles Angels spent most of Friday night looking flat, then pulled off a late escape. Facing their final out and nearly their final strike, they beat the Texas Rangers 5-4 in 10 innings at Anaheim to open the series and stretch their winning streak to a season-best five games.

All three ninth-inning runs came with two outs. Chad Wallach's two-run double did much of the damage. In the 10th, Zach Neto scored from third on a wild pitch, which Rangers right-hander Josh Sborz threw on his first pitch of the game with Anthony Rendon at the plate.

"I've seen stranger things," Angels manager Phil Nevin said. "We were hoping for anything there. I felt like I had the right guy at the plate too with Anthony." Nevin added that he considers Rendon probably the best in baseball at driving in a runner from third. "I'll take them any way I can get them," he said.

The comeback followed a day game in St. Louis on Thursday, which completed a three-game sweep of the Cardinals. For most of this one, the Angels had little going. They managed only two hits through seven innings, both singles, and a troublesome fourth inning put them in a hole.

Texas led 1-0 when Ezequiel Duran, behind 0-and-2 in the count, was hit on the left elbow by a pitch from Angels starter Tyler Anderson. Leody Taveras walked, and Bubba Thompson's sacrifice bunt attempt popped up in foul territory. Catcher Matt Thaiss made the catch but took a shoulder from the charging Rendon on the chin. He stayed in the game. Marcus Semien then lifted a fly ball to left that Taylor Ward lost in the dusk sky, and the ground-rule double made it 2-0.

Nathaniel Lowe followed with a grounder to shortstop, and Neto's throw to first sailed wide for his first error in 20 major-league games. The miscue came two days after he hurt a finger on his throwing hand, and it let Taveras score for a 3-0 lead. Nevin said the lost ball was "impossible to see when it gets above the lights," and praised Anderson for working through the inning despite his five walks in the game.

Lowe's run-scoring hit in the eighth made it 4-0, and Mike Trout's bloop RBI single to right-center cut the margin to 4-1.

In the ninth, against Rangers left-hander Will Smith (0-2), Rendon led off with a single. Two quick outs followed, but Brandon Drury singled to keep the inning alive. Wallach, who had entered the game at the top of the inning, drove a ball to the opposite field in right to score two and make it 4-3. Luis Rengifo's broken-bat single into shallow left-center then brought Wallach home to tie the game.

"It was awesome," Wallach said. "To bring it within one, to hit a double in a situation like that, it got me pumped up and the guys in the dugout too."

Angels right-hander Carlos Estevez (1-1) worked the 10th and stranded two Rangers runners, setting up the wild pitch that decided the game. Anderson said afterward that a pitcher has to keep making quality pitches when things go wrong and hope his team gets a chance to come back.